Yew for me has always held a legendary status. It is the wood of English longbows 600 years ago, the wood of Saxton Pope and archers of his era and the wood of some pretty incredible bows I've seen from bowyers here. When I first started down this journey of making my own bow from close to a decade ago, I used red oak boards. I knew someday I wanted to try using yew myself, just to have that experience. I believe the fact that it takes longer than my lifetime for this wood to grow enough to make a useable stave means that the wood is owed a certain level of respect. For a couple years I had this yew stave in my house, but I just never felt like my skill level was high enough to actually make the caliber of bow I feel like this wood deserves. Honestly when I started this bow I still didn't feel like I was worthy. But, I had the realization that after my daughter was born, there was a good chance that life would get in the way and the stave would never become a bow. So I started slowly working on it. 7 months later, I'm finally finished.
The bow itself is made from a small diameter piece of 35 rpi yew. The final bow is 63 inches from nock to nock, a little under one and half inches wide out of the fades, tapering down to 3/8ths at the tip and pulling 42lbs at 28 inches. The tip overlays are black walnut and red elm and I finished the bow with several coats of tru-oil. With this bow I didn't really try to push the limits of what the wood was capable of, but it still came out as one of my better performers - My chronograph measures a 10 gpp arrow around 170fps. I'm hoping this bow will survive for decades to come.
